


talk one-on-one

by sakon



Category: Lucha Underground
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:54:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24470140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakon/pseuds/sakon
Summary: Cortez visits the Garza household.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	talk one-on-one

**Author's Note:**

> can be considered ooc but idc. let me have remorseful cortez over cisco.

The wheels twist into the gravel driveway as he turns into the simple home. It isn't something to gawk about, with tiny windows and a bleak finish of dull red he assumes is from twenty years ago. The smell of spices wafts through the air, a distant sound of a knife against a cutting board audible from the walkway.

His fingers curl around the doorknob, feeling it unlocked, and open the door with a twist. He can feel the blistering heat press against his skin as he opens the door. There's Mariachi blasting, the smells of a home away from home tempting his mouth to salivate, and the loud tinkering coming from other rooms beyond the kitchen. It's all so familiar.

He steps into the kitchen. There's a figure hovering over the counter that he knows so well. 

"María," She doesn't move or startle, continuing to slice the remaining bits and pieces of vegetable on the counter until she's satisfied. Then, she turns.

The heavy bags under her eyes crinkle with joy, worn eyes and graying hair popping against the simple shirt she always wears. There isn't a time where she isn't busy, cooking, cleaning, working; it's almost worrying.

"Cortez," She smiles, the wrinkles in her eyes even more deeper, the blacks under her eyes so familiar, and the greys of her black hair shining under the kitchen light.

He moves closer. She doesn't move at the closer footsteps. He suspects she knows them well, just as he knows the thunder of her worn sandals smacking against the tile floor of such a familiar home. She knows to expect him on Wednesdays and Thursdays, even if she doesn't know exactly why he visits so often.

"How are you?" She opens her arms, so welcoming, and he ducks to accept the warm embrace.

"Alright," He pauses, savors the warmth that the rest of his life is clearly lacking, and pulls back with a widened smile. It's not much of a smile, more the baring of his teeth, but it makes María croak out a laugh, "You?"

"You're not alright." Her laugh breaks off, and her smile diminishes the slightest bit, "But you know how it is, don't you?"

He knows how it feels. His friend — a brother — is dead. He knows how it feels when guilt consumes him at an equal rate as sorrow, and he knows the way it feels when he can't wash the blood staining his hands no matter how hard his fingers burn.

But it's sorrow that they both have in common, even if it's not the same, so he merely murmurs, "Yeah,"

She laughs in response, then she pinches the puddy of his cheeks with a firm strength that only a mother would have, then she slaps the pudginess of his stomach. 

"You haven't been eating. You're skinny," She shakes her head and frowns, heading to the counter to make something for him. They both know the reason.

"But that doesn't matter. You're here to see Francisco, right?" María asks, though they know it all. They've known each other for what feels like millennia. 

He visits her, but more to see Cisco.

"Yeah," He replies again.

Her eyes flash with remembrance of her son, perhaps a forgiveness for all the troubles he's put her through. It's a look too wise for his age. Then, she blinks and it disappears.l, almost as if it never existed. Placing down her knife, she pushes the cutting board back and walks to a hallway. 

She inhales, then bellows, "Elena!" with her voice reverberating through the tiny house. It's only a moment later that the tiny footsteps of a child come against the tile floor.

"Yes, Mama?" Her head, so tiny and pudgy, peers around the corner of a wall.

"Show Cortez where Francisco is, okay?" She walks back to the cutting board while Elena walks towards him.

"Okie," She hums and waddles towards him.

* * *

"Elena," He picks the little girl up, holding the tiny body against his chest in a familiar greeting. She's only a baby, able to be cradled in his arms, and unaffected by the cruelty of the world. She's so fragile, fingers pudgy and eyes like pudding. She hardly goes up to his knee. His muscles tense and ache, but with the world in his arms, the tiny hands soft against the rough skin of his arms, there is nothing more easier to bare than simple aches.

He places her back onto the ground after a moment, watching the fuschia skirt do a spin as she swirls around and makes herself dizzy. Cisco's told her numerous times that she'll make herself _loca_ by doing that. It brings memories and a haze to his heart, so he ruffles her hair and bends over so she can see him fully. 

"Cortez!" She tugs at his pant legs with pebble-sized hands.

"Yeah?" He feels the concrete that the Temple set around his heart melt at the candy necklace and the Dora shirt. 

"Mama says I have to show you Francisco." Both María and him know he knows the way; he doesn't know how he couldn't know the way. He heard her say it, but he plays along.

"Then I guess you gotta show the way, huh?" Cortez musters a friendly smile, feeling the exhaustion of the Temple plaguing him from far away. 

She does. The house is small, red walls and brown furniture, so immaculately clean that he can smell the lavender wafting from the clean furniture. After a moment of walking, she reaches up to twist the handle of a door, giving a huff as she twists it, then opens it.

There Cisco is. There's an array of photos of him, the section of a big altar just for him, but he still sits amongst many photos. He's entombed in marble, a velvet red cloth underneath him, and a variety of trinkets and tools scattered around him. An incense burns, sending a smokey smell hitting him. 

Elena guides him along. He steps towards the marble box, letting the cold fall just barely beneath his finger tips. He stares, and he can feel Elena stare as well.

"Momma says he's in there, but I don't get it." Her tiny fingers smush like puddy against the marble, and he knows that Cisco would say something about it being too much money.

He brushes her hair into the tamest he can. Her face is pudgy like his, with a tiny nose and childish eyes that blink at the marble and at him. Elena brings him to the memories he had with Cisco.

"That's because he is, sunshine,"

* * *

_"Hell, put me in a box when I die, fuck all that expensive shit. Biggie style, homes. Cuz' when I die, fuck it, I wanna go to hell." He knew the lyrics when he heard them._

_"Biggie's great, but nah, you're not gonna let those who love you spoil you?"_

_"Homes, I'll be dead. It don't matter after I'm dead. Drop me in the ocean for all I care. It's not like my girl or my mama need to spend on me no more once I'm gone."_

_"What, you with a real female? What makes you so certain you'll die before your mom? Or your girl?"_

_Cisco rolled his eyes._

_"Exactly, bro. Not sure if I'll live long enough to get a female either. Hell, maybe you won't. They ain' had to do it before, n' they sure shouldn't when I'm dead."_

_"Why?" He wanted to know it. Him. Why didn't he care?_

_"Cuz' I'll be dead foo. Who gon remember me but from my family and you?"_

_"The believers. The people at the Temple." He supplied, but he didn't really have much more to say. Bael was less of a brother and more of a friend, and Bael was dead, so it didn't even matter._

_"Yeah, but they ever remember my ass for sum good?"_

_"They just might. Maybe one day they will."_

_"Foo, you mad bright, but I ain't gon be remembered, no matter how you put it. I ain't like you."_

_He had a strange amount of awareness about his position in life that he wasn't expecting when be befriended him. It was too much awareness for what his employer dubbed one of the many street thugs, and it constantly reminded him of the role he played. He was a cop pretending to be a thug, and Cisco was a simple thug who upon deeper inspection, didn't seem so simple._

_"You really believe that?"_

_"Yeah, man." He looked into the distance as they approach his house, "What cholo gets remembered?"_

_Cortez didn't say much after that. It was just the way it was._

* * *

"—an you gimme a piggyback?" 

He snaps out of the memory with a shiver. Cortez gets rid of the memory with a shake, tempted to smack himself upside the head. 

"Yeah, gimme a second," He smiles gently at her, then goes back to bowing his head to the marble.

He sees a curtain of comforting black when they close. After a moment of silence, he clenches his hands together, taking the rosary from the tiny table and pressing it against his heart. Cortez prays, the whispers coming from his lip cracked and low in the daylight. The rosary presses to his lips as he kisses it once, then the paper of the Son as his lips graze the pictures. He clenches the red beads in his hands, another prayer echoing from his lips. 

When he's done echoing his prayers, he lies down the rosary, eyes still closed. He speaks in his mind, rarely speaking of the Temple and its demons and more of his baby sister and his dearest mother. He figures that he'd like to hear about them. 

Then, when he's finished he bows his head and murmurs another prayer. He feels the warmth of his friend for another moment, and when he opens his eyes, the warmth is lingering. Then, it subsides.

Going through a ritual, even a simple prayer, helps to take it away. 

"Come on!" Elena tugs on his shirt, and he smiles, snapping back into reality.

He sends a lingering glance at the photo of Cisco, one that feels almost alive, and lets himself be dragged away, the familiar eyes somehow lingering on him beyond the tiny room. Or maybe it simply feels that way.


End file.
